Le Batard: Hassan Whiteside is ‘a Benign Knucklehead’

Hassan Whiteside got tossed from last night’s blowout loss against the San Antonio Spurs for intentionally delivering a vicious swinging elbow at the head of Boban Marjanovic.

The Miami Heat sent their enigmatic big man directly home to his condo across the street from American Airlines Arena, where he was said to be sitting in the corner for approximately one hour with no TV, Playstation, dunkaroos, or Snapchat.

Dan Le Batard appropriately called Hassan a “benign knucklehead” on his radio show this morning.

“Hassan Whiteside comes off the bench and gets triple-doubles but he’s a knucklehead,” Le Batard said. “He has had an interesting journey to the NBA through Lebanon. He’s an athletic seven-footer who gets his triple-doubles with blocks. He fell through the cracks even though he’s an athletic seven-footer because he’s a knucklehead. And he’s a benign knucklehead, he’s not someone who’s gonna get in trouble off the court. He’s just going to do stuff in social media you don’t want him doing and he’s gonna stuff like he did on the court yesterday where he gets ejected with what his own coach is saying is not a basketball play, he’s just frustrated.

“And the Miami Heat didn’t just send him to the locker room. They sent him actually home. They didn’t want him talking to media after the game in an emotional state so they just told him ‘go home.’ They sent him to his room.”

Whiteside’s never even played in a playoff game. I wonder how he is going to react when the intensity soars to levels he’s never experienced.

Le Batard went on to point out the Heat has “never invested a lot of money in a player that you can’t trust.”

It is becoming increasingly difficult to imagine a scenario where Pat Riley is going to invest over $100 million of his owner’s money into not only an enigmatic talent on the court but a player who’s susceptible to letting his emotions get the best of him. And this is all before getting paid.